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Hey! I'm Oscar, a Software Engineer in Barcelona. I've been traveling around the world for studying and working for the past 8 years (from Vietnam to US, German

Hey! I'm Oscar, a Software Engineer in Barcelona. I've been traveling around the world for studying and working for the past 8 years (from Vietnam to US, Germany, and Spain). I remember how difficult it was for me to find a place which was affordable and trustworthy. I tried several platforms, but still it was quite a hassle to determine if the postings I had found were legitimate. If I had known someone where I was moving, this problem would have been solved within a week. This was when I told my friend and said "let's build something cool and meaningful." Our intention is to help apartment seekers (those who are about to move to a new city) get rid of the hassle and time-consuming process of accommodation verification. Here are some fun facts for the geeks and entrepreneurs: - The MVP was built within 40 working hours and fully bootstrapped; pretty much nothing was built from scratch. - We're validating the idea, so most of the processes are manual. - The pricing was planned in 1 hour (so yes, maybe it's too expensive!). We didn't want to waste time, so we decided to iterate and decide later. What do you think? :)

itake 5y ago
Scammers target low-budget people (with their below market value listings). Low-budget people by-definition don't want to spend money on extra services and may think they are smart enough to spot the scams without this service.
- lazyorcas 5y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! What if we make the lower-budget apartment seekers realise that they can't "spot the scams" all by themselves, do you think they would end up paying? It also depends on where they are moving to because 12€ makes up only a tiny fraction of the monthly cost; in this case, 2-3% in Barcelona and Munich. Maybe we haven't communicated this well enough on our landing pages.
  - itake 5y ago
    No one expects to fall for scams. otherwise scams wouldn't work. People will even deny that they were scammed for pride. I'm trying to imagine how you would even grow this. Low Budget seekers go directly to craigslist, FB, and those sites, so how do you even get in front of them to upsell your service? Google/FB ads? Word of Mouth? Like someone would tell their buddy: "Hey, I am vulnerable to housing scams, so I pay 12€ to protect myself from falling for it. You're dumb too, so you should pay as well." If you're having to pay for ads, then you will need to increase your price significantly to cover marketing costs. This is kinda like insurance, you don't need it until you need it.
    - lazyorcas 5y ago
      Good point! However, this is a scaling problem, so we're not thinking about this right now. We're strictly focusing on "building things that don't scale." I think the problem that I'm trying to solve is not because people don't know about the tricks that scammers do, but more like handling their hassle of doing it. I disagree on the "you don't need it until you need it." This is not my target audience. My target audience is those that have suspicion or are unsure about an accommodation; for example, a new 1-star rated low-quality-image holiday rental on AirBnB.
zepearl 5y ago
Hi 1) It's not a bad idea, maybe this could be improved to include as well flats to be rented for holidays? I'm saying this because in Switzerland during the last years there have been some scams about holiday apartments available to be rented (both cheap & avg-expensive) as they didn't actually exist (pics of Ikea & similar were used, addresses didn't exist, contact phone number wasn't related at all to the location of the apartment, etc). 2) Asking me first of all for my email address completely stops me from trying out your product (especially now as I understand it as being a proof-of-concept?). 3) "scambuster" encompasses all possible scams => you probably need a better name that targets better your area (housing). 4) What do you mean exactly with "Contact host to further investigate"? Will you call whoever has posted the ad to try to understand if the offer is legit or not? If yes, will you then e.g. ask questions related to the neighbourhood that you see on google maps to understand if they know what they're talking about? Ask about how the local soccer team is doing? Sounds like a very time-consuming therefore costly service... . 5) In the context of holiday apartments, if you end up supporting that, 5 EUR per request would definitely be too much :) Wish you a lot of luck!!! Cheers :D
- lazyorcas 5y ago
  Thank you for the feedbacks and kind words! They're very helpful. 1) I've changed the banner description to include all housing types. And thanks for letting me know about this. Where did you find this information about the situation in Switzerland? 2) This is a very good point. We've moved it to the last step of the form. We need the emails to inform the users afterwards, so I think it's necessary. Unless you have a better idea. 3) Yeah, we spent very little time to decide on the name because we had to ship fast and move fast. Hence, this is why you might be confused now. It's likely that we change the name in the future, but that's a success story for another time. 4) This is another very good point. I've added this to the FAQs. However, should we also include this in the pricing page? 5) To make the pricing simple, we make it fixed for every type of rental. We're just going with this for now and see. Have a lovely Sunday ahead! :D
  - zepearl 5y ago
    1) > Where did you find this information about the situation in Switzerland? Sometimes on Friday evenings there is a show broadcasted by the italian-speaking Swiss channel called "Patti chiari" which discusses problems/scams/etc... => two months ago they showed this small doc ( https://www.rsi.ch/la1/programmi/informazione/patti-chiari/Inchieste/inchieste-andate-in-onda/Grand-Hotel-Booking-14329806.html https://www.rsi.ch/la1/programmi/informazione/patti-chiari/I... ) that included as well scams about fake apartments being available to be rented. It's a small self-made reportage, so it might be available to be viewed outside of Switzerland. But the audio is available only on italian :P 2) The problem is still that I would probably not give me my email address if I feel unsure if you'll then disclose it to 3rd parties un/willingly... :) To just try out the automated part of your service maybe you could generate a ~random code that would allow the user to check the status & see the results of his/her submission? In general I mean that I didn't understand if you'll just provide a generic answer (e.g. "the house/flat is OK!"), or if you'll provide something like a list of checks that were performed coupled with some confidence level (e.g. "Duplicate of 2 published pics -> found on these XX sites -> 50% bad", "Address -> not found -> 100% bad", "Phone number -> does not belong to address area code -> 100% bad", and so on, not sure what else can be checked...), or something else.. . I don't think that the site shows at least an example of the result that somebody would get, or have I missed it? Cheers

itake 5y ago

Scammers target low-budget people (with their below market value listings). Low-budget people by-definition don't want to spend money on extra services and may think they are smart enough to spot the scams without this service.

lazyorcas 5y ago
Thanks for the feedback! What if we make the lower-budget apartment seekers realise that they can't "spot the scams" all by themselves, do you think they would end up paying? It also depends on where they are moving to because 12€ makes up only a tiny fraction of the monthly cost; in this case, 2-3% in Barcelona and Munich. Maybe we haven't communicated this well enough on our landing pages.
- itake 5y ago
  No one expects to fall for scams. otherwise scams wouldn't work. People will even deny that they were scammed for pride. I'm trying to imagine how you would even grow this. Low Budget seekers go directly to craigslist, FB, and those sites, so how do you even get in front of them to upsell your service? Google/FB ads? Word of Mouth? Like someone would tell their buddy: "Hey, I am vulnerable to housing scams, so I pay 12€ to protect myself from falling for it. You're dumb too, so you should pay as well." If you're having to pay for ads, then you will need to increase your price significantly to cover marketing costs. This is kinda like insurance, you don't need it until you need it.
  - lazyorcas 5y ago
    Good point! However, this is a scaling problem, so we're not thinking about this right now. We're strictly focusing on "building things that don't scale." I think the problem that I'm trying to solve is not because people don't know about the tricks that scammers do, but more like handling their hassle of doing it. I disagree on the "you don't need it until you need it." This is not my target audience. My target audience is those that have suspicion or are unsure about an accommodation; for example, a new 1-star rated low-quality-image holiday rental on AirBnB.

zepearl 5y ago

Hi 1) It's not a bad idea, maybe this could be improved to include as well flats to be rented for holidays? I'm saying this because in Switzerland during the last years there have been some scams about holiday apartments available to be rented (both cheap & avg-expensive) as they didn't actually exist (pics of Ikea & similar were used, addresses didn't exist, contact phone number wasn't related at all to the location of the apartment, etc). 2) Asking me first of all for my email address completely stops me from trying out your product (especially now as I understand it as being a proof-of-concept?). 3) "scambuster" encompasses all possible scams => you probably need a better name that targets better your area (housing). 4) What do you mean exactly with "Contact host to further investigate"? Will you call whoever has posted the ad to try to understand if the offer is legit or not? If yes, will you then e.g. ask questions related to the neighbourhood that you see on google maps to understand if they know what they're talking about? Ask about how the local soccer team is doing? Sounds like a very time-consuming therefore costly service... . 5) In the context of holiday apartments, if you end up supporting that, 5 EUR per request would definitely be too much :) Wish you a lot of luck!!! Cheers :D

lazyorcas 5y ago
Thank you for the feedbacks and kind words! They're very helpful. 1) I've changed the banner description to include all housing types. And thanks for letting me know about this. Where did you find this information about the situation in Switzerland? 2) This is a very good point. We've moved it to the last step of the form. We need the emails to inform the users afterwards, so I think it's necessary. Unless you have a better idea. 3) Yeah, we spent very little time to decide on the name because we had to ship fast and move fast. Hence, this is why you might be confused now. It's likely that we change the name in the future, but that's a success story for another time. 4) This is another very good point. I've added this to the FAQs. However, should we also include this in the pricing page? 5) To make the pricing simple, we make it fixed for every type of rental. We're just going with this for now and see. Have a lovely Sunday ahead! :D
- zepearl 5y ago
  1) > Where did you find this information about the situation in Switzerland? Sometimes on Friday evenings there is a show broadcasted by the italian-speaking Swiss channel called "Patti chiari" which discusses problems/scams/etc... => two months ago they showed this small doc ( https://www.rsi.ch/la1/programmi/informazione/patti-chiari/Inchieste/inchieste-andate-in-onda/Grand-Hotel-Booking-14329806.html https://www.rsi.ch/la1/programmi/informazione/patti-chiari/I... ) that included as well scams about fake apartments being available to be rented. It's a small self-made reportage, so it might be available to be viewed outside of Switzerland. But the audio is available only on italian :P 2) The problem is still that I would probably not give me my email address if I feel unsure if you'll then disclose it to 3rd parties un/willingly... :) To just try out the automated part of your service maybe you could generate a ~random code that would allow the user to check the status & see the results of his/her submission? In general I mean that I didn't understand if you'll just provide a generic answer (e.g. "the house/flat is OK!"), or if you'll provide something like a list of checks that were performed coupled with some confidence level (e.g. "Duplicate of 2 published pics -> found on these XX sites -> 50% bad", "Address -> not found -> 100% bad", "Phone number -> does not belong to address area code -> 100% bad", and so on, not sure what else can be checked...), or something else.. . I don't think that the site shows at least an example of the result that somebody would get, or have I missed it? Cheers